


Twenty One and a Half Donuts

by KittooningMalijah



Series: The Wolf, the Roman, and Donuts [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, because why not, donut shop au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:59:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/pseuds/KittooningMalijah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler and Rory Williams have worked together for nearly three years, but they don't know all that much about each other. Then comes the day that they're the only two working, and twenty questions seems like a pretty good way to pass the time.</p>
<p>[[Donut Shop AU]]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty One and a Half Donuts

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry but I was sitting and playing Papa's Donuteria on Flonga and I made that inevitable (but horrible) decision to design my two servers after Rose and Rory and then this happened.

Somehow, in all of Rose Tyler's three years working at Bad Wolf Donuts, her worst day at work wasn't the day she was the only one working during the morning rush, or the day she walked in on Jack and the girl he'd been flirting with shagging in the employee restroom, or the day that she got yelled at by a customer for getting the order wrong. No, her worst day at work had to be the day Jack called in sick.

It wasn't that she couldn't handle the work load, because hardly anyone came in even during the rush hour. On any normal day, that meant messing around with Jack and playing games to pass the time. On the day that Jack called in sick, she was left alone for almost ten hours with Rory Williams. She liked Rory, she did, but she wasn't  _friends_ with Rory the way she was friends with Jack - or at all, really.

Rory Williams was from Leadworth, a small town a few hours away from London, and had been working at the donut shop even longer than she had, and that was all she new about him, which made conversation difficult. And ten hours of relative silence with scattered customers was most definitely her worst day at work.

* * *

_Of course_ Jack would call in sick this day of all days - the day Rory was planning on leaving work an hour early to go back to Leadworth for the weekend for the first time in months. He knew his dad would understand that he had to work, but that wasn't what he was worried about. He was worried about Amy. Amelia Pond who was a simple phone call away from a Saturday night dinner or Sunday afternoon movie or  _any_ kind of date. If he didn't ask her out soon, while he still had the courage and she wasn't currently seeing anyone, his opportunity would be gone.

But instead of mentally preparing himself for a three hour drive and possibly the most nerve wracking question he's ever had to ask in his life, he was spending his day tiptoeing around his coworker like he has been for years. Oh, he liked Rose well enough, but he didn't know anything about her other than she lived in a flat a few streets down and she and Jack were friends.

If he could make it through ten hours with no incidents regarding the colleague he was avoiding, he could easily muster up the courage to ask out Amy Pond.

Although, just saying that didn't make it easy. There were two separate events by the time they closed up shop that could have ended much worse than they did. The first was a too-hot coffee that got sent back because a (rather picky) customer refused to drink something "sub-par," and it got spilled directly onto Rory's trainers when he accidentally bumped into her while she was delivering a box of donuts to a table. The second was during the last two hours of their shift, when no one else would be coming in and there was absolutely nothing to do but wipe down the counters and tables for the fourth time.

* * *

To put it simply, Rose was bored. The most exciting thing that had happened in the last fifteen minutes was her third burned donut in preparing for the off chance that someone would walk in and buy some on their way home from work. "I've got another one." She didn't have to turn around to know that Rory was putting another tally mark at the bottom of the chalkboard behind the counter to mark the latest doughy casualty. "And that's a dozen good donuts. There  _has_ to be another way to pass the time." Her coworker had gone back to running a damp towel over the countertop - again - and she took the opportunity to catch him off guard and hop up to sit just inches from where he was about to clean. Unfortunately, depending on whose side you happened to be on, it did little more than elicit a bored sigh. "Oh, c'mon, Rory. I'll bet you all three burnt donuts that we couldn't even pretend to know each other's middle names."

Honestly, he didn't see the point in this, not when he should be focusing on how he was planning on stopping to get some flowers to possibly make his first stop in Leadworth that much easier. "What do our middle names have to do anything?"

"We've worked together for three years and all I know about you is that you used to live in Leadworth and your name is Rory Williams." When she put it that way, it sounded so much worse than just not knowing much about each other and, after a moment of thought, she knew just how to fix that dilemma. "We should play a game."

By the time Rory lifted his head to look up at her, she was gone, heading into the back room to collect two boxes of last week's stale donuts that Jack was supposed to take out and throw away days ago. "Wait, what?"

He was left watching as she set out a row of twelve stale donuts for each of them across the recently cleaned counter, explaining as she went. "Jack and I used to play this back when we first met, and it's the only way I can get my brother to eat broccoli when mum cooks. I'll ask you a question, and you can either eat a stale donut, or answer it and I'll eat one of mine, and then you ask me a question. Last one with donuts left wins."

That was actually kind of genius, in a strange, Rose Tyler kind of way. "You have a brother?"

Rory could have sworn he saw his blonde colleague smirk before pushing one of the stale, sugar glaze covered treats in his direction. "Yeah - Tony. He'll be six next month. What about you? Any siblings?"

Her answer was a shake of his head and a gesture toward her own row of donuts. As she selected one with cherry flavored filling, the man next to her prepared his next question. “Do you have a bloke?”

“Oi! No flirting during the game, Williams.” Rose rolled her eyes, shaking her head and taking a bite out of the donut in her hand before actually answering. “And yes, I do.” There was no mistaking the look of something like disbelief that flickered in his eyes and she immediately stood up a bit straighter, her tone defensive. “I do. His name’s John Smith.”

The sound that Rory made at that was a mix between a laugh and a scoff as he shook his head. “ _John Smith_? You expect me to believe you when you say your boyfriend’s name is _John Smith_? I can’t believe you want us to know more about each other and you’re making up a boyfriend.”

“He’s _real_ ,” she argued, shaking her head with a small, halfhearted frown. “And I'm gonna tell him you said I made him up. You don't think I could get a bloke? That's hurtful, Rory."

He was quick to correct her, shaking his head with a small frown at her in return. "I never said that. I said that John Smith doesn't sound like a real person."

There was no time for him to react more than to close his eyes before a donut covered in powdered sugar hit him square in the nose.

* * *

By the end of the hour long donut war, which only ended because they had to clean up so that opening up in the morning wouldn't take an extra hour, there were twenty one and a half donuts scattered around the floor, half of one had somehow ended up in Rory's hair, and the two that they'd started eating at the beginning of the game had been discarded and ignored on the counter. They both agreed to never mention the mess that had been cleaned up or the events that led up to it to Jack, and hoped they'd cleaned all the sugar and icing and filling from the tile floor.

And then Rose left for her Friday night date with John Smith, who her coworker - now friend - still thought wasn't a real person, while he started the drive to Leadworth to ask Amy Pond the question he'd been planning on asking for months. The story had some how gotten told in the crossfires of war, and when Rose checked her texts while getting ready for bed, she had exactly two. One was from Jack, asking how the day at work went, and the other was from Rory, containing three simple words that made her smile. " _She said yes!_ "


End file.
